This invention relates in general to configuring hardware devices to achieve desired functionality and more specifically to maintaining records of permitted functions or features and providing the functions or features to an adaptable device.
Traditional consumer electronic devices have substantially fixed functionality. Devices such as cell phones, digital audio players, personal digital assistants (PDAs), global positioning satellite (GPS) terminals, etc. are designed from scratch and manufactured and marketed as a specific type of device with a specific feature set. Such fixed function devices can be problematic when the data formats, processing requirements or other functions of the device must be changed in order for the device to be useful, or even useable, in e.g., different geographic locations, at a later point in time, etc. Functions not envisioned at design time are difficult to add on later.
For example, a user who purchases a cell phone in the United States might have to travel to a European country. The code-division multiplexed device (CDMA, cdmaOne, etc.) obtained in the U.S. may not be compatible with a European cellular system such as Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). Features such as caller ID, call waiting, etc., might not use the same data identification, communication protocols, processing and signal standards, etc. Standards also change with time so that a device, such as a CDMA cell phone, might be incompatible with later developments such as future web-enabled telephone standards. For example, the 1595B CDMA standard vs. the HDR CDMA data standard.
Another problem with fixed function devices is that users must typically buy different devices to perform different functions. For example, a user might need a cell phone, digital audio device and pager. This would typically require a user to carry three separate electronic devices. Often users purchase devices with features that they have little need for. Other users may obtain the same devices and discover that there are features that they would like to have that the device can't perform. Since manufacturers must design a single device to mass market, it is inevitable that most users will not have a good match between features that they want or need. This is especially true since the users' wants and needs often change over time and place. Similarly, standards, such as MPEG-2, 3, 4, and 5; evolve and vary over time and place.
A typical approach of today's manufacturers is to load a device with many features. However, this adds to the cost of the device for most user's who will never use many of the features.
A traditional approach to device design is illustrated in FIG. 3. About 90% of the million operations per second (MOPS) of a typical mobile electronics design resides in a lowest “layer 0” implemented with fixed function silicon (FFS) accelerators. Digital signal processing (DSP) is used in the upper portion of layer 0 and the lower portion of layer 1. In a typical design the DSP circuitry may be utilized 95%, or more, of the time. This leaves few DSP MOPS available for other features, changes in requirements, etc. The FFS are usually all point solutions with no flexibility to reallocate their use.